| UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA
JAMES E. ROGERS COLLEGE OF LAW |
SEPTEMBER 4, 2024 | | |
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This week, we are pleased to welcome Teresa Miguel-Stearns, Director of the Daniel F. Cracchiolo Law Library, as our guest writer:
Greetings from the Law Library!
Over the summer, it’s always fun to take a deep breath, enjoy the rare silence (rare even in the library!) and reflect on the year’s accomplishments of the amazing law library team.
From leading a national conversation on artificial intelligence to collaborating on vital projects with local communities, from educating our students about resources and research methods to providing superb research support to our faculty, this library team is deeply committed to our communities and we are fully integrated in the teaching and research mission of the College of Law. You’ll see that this team also collected a few awards over the summer in recognition of their innovative and impactful work.
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Until the footnotes,
Teresa Miguel-Stearns
Associate Dean, Legal Information Innovation
Director of the Daniel F. Cracchiolo Law Library
Professor of Law
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Law Library Brings Home Multiple American Association of Law Library Awards | |
In July, the Daniel F. Cracchiolo Law Library team received multiple accolades during the American Association of Law Libraries (AALL) Annual Meeting. The AALL Awards publicly recognize the achievements of law librarians based on service to the profession and contributions to legal literature. | |
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Foreign, Comparative & International Law Librarian Marcelo Rodriguez received the Emerging Leader Award, which recognizes newer members who have already made significant contributions to the Association and/or to the profession and have demonstrated the potential for leadership and continuing service.
Marcelo also received a research grant to support his work on the Virtual Law Library of Territories. This virtual library seeks to serve as a free database with primary and secondary sources which were fundamental to his upcoming book, Access to Legal and Government Information in US and Canadian Territories.
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University of Arizona Land-Grant Project Team: Kristen Keck, Cas Laskowski, Samantha Ginsburg and Teresa Miguel-Stearns | |
The Daniel F. Cracchiolo Law Library as a whole was named the recipient of two awards during the conference, the Excellence in Community Engagement Award and the Public Access to Government Information Award, for the University of Arizona Land-Grant Project: Tracking the History of Land-Grant Enrichment at the University of Arizona. Members of the Land-Grand Project team (pictured above) are Teresa Miguel-Stearns, director of the law library and a professor of law; Cas Laskowski, law library's head of research, data and instruction; Kristen Keck, library services associate; and Samantha Ginsburg, law library fellow and graduate assistant.
Library and Information Science graduate students Chaitanya Furlong and Matthew Clemens won the student paper division of the AALL/LexisNexis Call for Papers Award for their work on “Quantifying Qualifications: Salary Insights Through a Job Posting Analysis.” This paper was the students’ final project for Teresa’s Law Library Practice & Administration class. They received significant support on their data collection and analysis effort from Cas.
Law Library Fellow Kristin Wolek received one of four grants for newer members to attend the conference.
Finally, former Law Library Fellow Devan Orr, who is now the foreign and international reference librarian at William & Mary Law School, was the recipient of the Minority Leadership Development Award.
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Leading the Way on AI for Law Schools and the Profession | |
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Over the 2023-24 academic year, University of Arizona Law led a group of law libraries across the United States in a series of regional roundtables with leaders of law libraries, law firm knowledge management groups and other stakeholders discussing the opportunities and challenges in incorporating artificial intelligence into legal education and practice.
The goal of the program, Future of Law Libraries: Artificial Intelligence, Opportunities, and Advancement, is to prepare law libraries across the country to strategically incorporate artificial intelligence into their operations to enhance collections, instruction/training and services.
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The initiative kicked off in October at the University of Arizona Washington, D.C. Center for Outreach and Collaboration. Cas Laskowski, Associate Librarian and Head of Research, Data & Instruction at the University of Arizona Daniel F. Cracchiolo Law Library, moderated the discussion. The group, which included Dean Marc Miller and Faculty Director of the Health Law & Policy Program Tara Sklar, concluded that, while the challenges for law libraries and law librarianship are real, the opportunities outweigh the challenges. Some of those opportunities include inclusivity and access to justice.
The group encouraged law librarians to be proactive in setting policies and in training staff. For example, it recommended that law firms develop policies regarding permissible use, approved products and more for use of generative AI.
“Collaboration across the legal profession will be vital to the success of any future progress in this area,” the group’s report concluded.
“Giving colleagues time to think deeply and collaboratively about these issues has given us short- and long-term goals and the momentum to implement them in coming years,” said Cas of the roundtable series.
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In addition, Cas is currently serving on the AI and Access to Justice Subgroup of the Arizona Steering Committee on Artificial Intelligence and the Courts. The steering committee was created in 2024 to advise state courts on implementation, evaluation and ethical use of AI technologies.
This past summer, Cas also participated in a panel on Artificial Intelligence and Access to Justice at the Arizona Summit on Artificial Intelligence, Law, and the Courts. Cas, along with Judge Samuel Thumma of the Arizona Court of Appeals and University of Arizona Law Director of Empirical & Policy Research Chris Griffin (pictured right), discussed the opportunity for access to justice and the potential pitfalls for self-represented litigants.
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Expanding Availability of Law Library Careers | |
Jennifer Bedier, law librarian and project manager for the IMLS grant to expand the Law Library Fellow Program, promotes the National Fellows Program at the AALL Annual Meeting. The poster was designed by Hannah Plotkin, library services assistant, with text by Jennifer Bedier and Kristin Wolek, law library fellow. | |
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As with many law-related careers, the barriers to entry to a career in law librarianship are high. Many law librarians have earned a master’s degree in library and information science in addition to a JD. Further, law students and young legal professionals are often not aware the career option even exists.
The Daniel F. Cracchiolo Law Library is working to expand its fellows program to provide broader access to education and work opportunities.
Established in 2000, the University of Arizona Law Library Fellows Program has been a premier experiential training ground for aspiring law librarians nationwide. Now, thanks to a generous grant from the U.S. Institute of Museum and Library Services, the fellows program is expanding its reach to partner with other law libraries at law firms, law schools and governmental organizations around the country.
Fellows are able to earn an advanced degree in the University of Arizona online Master of Arts in Library and Information Science (MLIS) program and receive a salary, fringe benefits and tuition remission. They will work 20 hours a week for up to two years at participating law libraries – academic, firm and government – around the country.
For many, law librarianship is a second career option and moving to a location that provides a suitable master’s program is cost and time prohibitive. The expanded fellows program allows students to earn the MLIS remotely while gaining experience at a law library, without leaving their homes and support communities.
We at the law library have written about the challenges to our profession, as well as what is being done at the University of Arizona and around the U.S., in a recent research paper on “Democratizing Law Librarianship: Reducing Barriers to Entry through Alternative Pathways to the Profession and Increased Support to Students: A Call to Action.” We are proud that the University of Arizona and the College of Law are at the forefront of efforts including the expanded fellows program, as well as numerous degree programs in law and library and information science that can serve as a pathway to this rewarding career.
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Collaboration Works to Digitize Navajo Library Collection | |
Navajo Nation Department of Water Resources Library, credit: Maurice Upshaw (Diné) | |
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The Navajo Nation Department of Water Resources Library Preservation Project (NNDWRLPP) recently concluded its fifth year. In a collaboration among the Navajo Nation, Daniel F. Cracchiolo Law Library, Agnese Nelms Haury Program in Environment and Social Justice at the University of Arizona, and Law Library Microform Consortium (LLMC), the project is digitizing 8,250 print resources. This vast and unique collection encompasses the history and geography of the Navajo Nation’s water resources found across more than 27,000 square miles of the southwestern United States.
Over the past academic year, the partnership, under the leadership of project manager Jessica Ugstad, the law library’s Head of Collections, has processed and inventoried the entire collection and digitized and catalogued 219 resources, many of which are now publicly available for the first time on LLMC’s Open Access database.
Protecting the Indigenous information and data sovereignty of the Navajo Nation serves as the foundation of the NNDWRLPP’s mission. Every decision made on this project and all access to the collection now and once digitized remains under the control of NNDWR and the Navajo Nation.
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Digital Records for Greater Access | |
Jaime Valenzuela leading a presentation at the AALL Annual Meeting | |
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Our Archivist, Jaime Valenzuela, has been actively involved in various efforts to digitize University of Arizona Law materials and records, which in turn provides greater access to a wealth of materials.
Jaime is collaborating with the University of Arizona Main Library to preserve College of Law archives by loading them into the University of Arizona Institutional Repository. The UA Campus Repository is a publicly available institutional repository. Sharing UA research with the world, the UA Campus Repository supports the widest possible dissemination of UA research and scholarship.
Jaime has created a rich digital archive of the law library’s digital collections providing online access to content from the Law Library’s Special Collections and the Arizona College of Law Collection, including College of Law publications and state and federal documents related to Arizona’s legal and political history.
Jaime’s work also was recently featured in a chapter of the new book, “Creating an Inclusive Library: Approaches for Increasing Engagement and Use with Students of Color.” In a chapter titled Demonstrating Inclusion and Allyship: Amplifying an Indigenous Voice Through Physical and Digital Exhibition, Jaime writes about his collaboration with Navajo author and Indigenous Peoples Law and Policy alumnus Joseph Austin.
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Curated Book Lists and More on the Law Library Blog | |
Do You Have News?
Your success is the college’s success and we want to celebrate with you! If you have landed a new job, received an award or recognition, stepped into a leadership role or have good news in general, let us know.
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As you can see, the Arizona Law librarians are leading national conversations around artificial intelligence, the future of law libraries, access to the profession and more. We are also deeply committed to our local communities and to the teaching and research missions of the College of Law. For more on the initiatives discussed in this newsletter, see our annual reports.
With the start of the semester, we are now back in the classroom and working with students while continuing to support the research and instructional needs of our faculty. In short, we do it all! We are a great team, agile and evolving with the needs of the students and faculty, the university and college, and the library and profession.
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